China’s Long March 10B rocket completed its maiden flight on June 23, 2024, marking a milestone in the country’s pursuit of reusable launch technology. The two-stage, medium-lift vehicle lifted off with a simulated payload of 5,000 kilograms for technology verification, and its first stage made a controlled vertical landing on a floating platform in the South China Sea.
The flight demonstrated key reusability features including grid fins, landing legs, and a variable thrust engine, positioning the rocket as a commercial counterpart to the broader Long March 10 family designed for lunar missions, space station servicing, and commercial launches.
Technical Specifications and Performance
The Long March 10B stands 62 meters tall with a diameter of 5 meters, burning liquid oxygen (LOX) and kerosene (RP-1) propellants. Its first stage is powered by seven YF-100K engines, each generating 120 tons of sea-level thrust for a combined 840 tons.
The second stage employs two YF-100M engines, each delivering 130 tons of thrust in vacuum. The rocket can deliver 14,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit (LEO) and 5,000 kilograms to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), placing it firmly in the medium-lift category. Reusability is central to the design. Four grid fins provide aerodynamic control during descent, while landing legs enable vertical touchdown.
The landing system relies on a variable thrust engine capable of throttling between 50% and 100% thrust, a critical capability for controlled landings. The first stage is designed for up to 10 reuses per unit.
Guidance comes from inertial navigation augmented by GPS and China’s BeiDou satellite navigation network, providing redundancy and accuracy standard for modern launch vehicles. The maiden flight’s first stage recovery zone was a floating platform in the South China Sea, mirroring approaches used by other reusable rocket programs.
Development and Economic Goals
The Long March 10B’s development cost is estimated at $2.5 billion, a substantial investment that China aims to recoup through reduced per-flight costs. The target launch price is $30 million per flight once reusability is achieved, a figure that would be competitive in the global launch market.
The maiden flight carried a 5,000-kilogram simulated payload—the same mass as the rocket’s GTO capacity—suggesting the mission was designed to verify performance under representative conditions. The rocket’s two-stage, LOX/RP-1 configuration is a proven combination for medium-lift launches, and the reusability features including the variable thrust engine are engineered to support multiple flights.
Broader Program and Future Missions
The Long March 10B is part of the Long March 10 family developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology. The program was first publicly outlined at an aerospace exhibition in late 2018, with early concepts drawing on the Long March 5 architecture. The standard Long March 10 is a super heavy-lift rocket with a core stage and two strap-on boosters, designed to carry China’s Mengzhou crewed spacecraft or the Lanyue lunar lander on trans-lunar trajectories.
That version uses three stages and is part of Project 921, which aims to land Chinese astronauts on the lunar surface.
